Gilded Cage- Hero's and Anti Hero's
by baby-kitsune9
Summary: they weren't exactly the hero's that the world thought them to be. Tony was a syndicate boss. And the others were his soldiers, his spys, his scientist and assassins. No one expected his relationship with thirteen year old Parker to change into something more...parental. Nor the complications that would arise when May died before he finally bring the boy home. Fem Ichigo/Avengers.
1. Chapter 1

It all started with an obsession, like many things in Tony's life often did.

He'd met someone innocent and sweet and kind- all things that never lasted long in the dangerous world in which he immersed himself in- and yet, it made him _want_. Nothing in a romantic sense, mind you.

Even he had limits in which he drew a line. Especially since he wasn't a pedophile by any means and the person that he'd met was just a _thirteen _year old boy.

Nothing more than a child despite his differences and maturity.

He was a brilliant kid, Peter. Smart, awkward, funny. He spent every weekend for the past year in a half or so working in Tony's lab with him or coming over to watch movies with him and the rest of the Avengers.

And after a time of getting to know one another and being able to spend more time together- Tony began to love him like the son he'd never had. And probably never would.

Which was what had brought them all to this moment.

In the past year since meeting the boy and a lot of careful planning- Tony was finally ready to make his move to legally take Peter from his Aunt May.

Now don't get him wrong, he planned to do everything in his power to make everything nice and legal and air tight especially since May was getting on up there in age and was obviously struggling to take care of herself and Peter if the last time that he'd visited them was any indication at all.

He'd noticed that a lot of the valuables that May had once possessed, her jewelry, her knick-knacks and such were all gone. He'd also noticed that the woman had looked sickly, and worn out and had asked if she was okay.

She'd merely waved his concern off and fed him one of her terrible homemade baked fig loaf's. The same kind that made him gag. Which he suspected was why she had fed it to him. As a punishment for showing any concern for her wellbeing.

It was an odd way of punishing someone, but he took it with as much dignity and grace as a man his age could.

And the next day, he had his revenge. Well sort of anyways, when he'd had a shit ton of cook books with actual _delicious_ food recipes delivered to the Parker residence. And got a scathing phone call from May in return for his kind effort to steer her _away_ from the poison that she kept feeding him and his kid.

He didn't even have his feelings hurt when Peter sent him a warning text that same day telling him to _run_ before May showed up at his office to kill him. After all, he had a decent relationship with the two.

And he liked pitting himself against May Parker. It kept them both sharp.

All fun and games aside though, he also knew that May wasn't exactly happy that he was hanging around her nephew.

After all, she was an old lady and had likely heard a few things here and there about both sides of Tony's business dealings. The legitimate kind, and the non-legitimate stuff that most people rarely spoke of.

And as such she tended to question his every motive. Which was perfectly understandable to him, a bit frustrating, but understandable nevertheless. After all, Peter was her _only_ living relative now. He was young and impressionable and she didn't want him around the wrong kind of people.

And Tony totally knew and understood her worries and concerns, he wasn't always the nicest of men.

He'd lived a good thirty some odd years working as a weapons dealer and merchant of death (in both the legal and illegal sense) and had built a nice empire of himself and his inner circle. And he had a _lot_ of blood on his hands. A lot of his inner circle of friends did too.

And a lot of that blood was innocent whether he liked to admit it or not.

However despite all of that, he wanted her blessing to take Peter away form all of the trouble, and strife and violence that he'd undoubtedly seen and experienced while living with her. That wasn't his way of saying that she was a terrible guardian- far from it.

May was a great woman that Tony held in very high esteem because of the way that she and her late husband Ben had raised the boy. But he had seen the strain on her face when he'd last seen them. She had been exhausted enough to almost pass out before he left their home.

And that wasn't good for her health.

It wasn't exactly good for Peter's either given how worried about her he must be. And it wasn't as if he'd cut her out of Peter's life. He wasn't totally cruel.

No- his plan- was to take Peter, legally become his guardian or father. And May, if she was so inclined could move into the tower with the boy. They'd still see each other everyday! Honest. It was just...that Tony would be assuming all responsibility for the boy phisically, mentally, school wise, financially.

He planned to take care of May too. So that she could finally take a real breather. Maybe even work on her cooking some.

And if she did, well, he planned to make the super soldiers, Steve and Bucky, taste test. After all if she somehow managed to poison them then there was no way in hell he was ever eating her food again. Friend or not, he liked living thank you very much.

And in his opinion, anything that could fell a super soldier should be avoided at all costs.

Which was why it was so utterly fucking devastating...when the day to go and speak with May about Peter's future finally came. He'd decided to go one day when he was free to do so, sometime while Peter was at school. And upon reaching the house there was yellow police tape blocking off the door.

Instantly feeling a sick feeling of dread, Tony quickly made his way up tot he door and ripped the tape down. His only thought was that something had happened to them.

Something had happened to his kid and his Aunt and he _needed_ to make sure that they were okay.

Getting the door open was easy for him. After all he wore solid steel battle armor almost on a daily basis. For him to do that and be able to move as freely as he did, he had to be able to carry the burden of the weight firmly on his shoulders. He'd be dead if he couldn't.

So once the door was open and he stepped inside of the house, anxiously sweeping the living room and finding it oddly gutted and barren of anything even the furniture, he moved on until he found a chalk outline of an adult.

It was old and slightly faded, but he could still see it easily enough to know who it was that had lain there where he stood.

"No." The denial was ripped from him before he ever realized that he had spoken it and his eyes became misty with tears as he stepped around the outline as if it were May's body still there on the floor, and his anxiety spiked tenfold as he moved through the rest of the house looking for any signs of Peter only to find him gone.

All traces of him having ever lived in the house with May was gone as if he had never been there at all.

He was shaking uncontrollably by the time he finally made it back to where the outline had been and dropped to the floor next to it and wept for his boy and his Aunt.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there on the floor simply crying, but by the time the others finally realized that he was gone and hadn't come back, two days had passed. Two days he'd spent alone and in mourning, while staring at the chalk outline of the woman that he had dared to think of as his friend.

And by the time everyone had finally managed to calm him down and get him out of there, he swore on May's grave that he would find Peter and he would take care of him.

He would get him back and see him alive, and safe, and happy and whole all the days of his life.

He would. He would. _He_ _would!_


	2. Chapter 2

A week later-

Ichigo was sitting at the dining room table just staring blankly at her laptop, _again_, when Peter had wandered in and noticed that his breakfast was already laid out for him.

"Morning." He greeted his guardian in a sleepy tone. She glanced up at him and blinked for a moment before then looking over his shoulder at the clock on the wall and cringing.

"Shit, that time already." It wasn't a question. Even if it sounded sort of like one. This was a routine thing for the two of them since they went through it almost every morning since the day he'd come to live with her.

Ichigo Kurosaki was a friend of his late Aunt's, though he'd never really found out how the two women knew each other. His Aunt had never mentioned her before and every time he tried asking Ichigo, she merely said something about it being complicated and then walked away.

So up until his Aunt died almost three months prior- the young woman had been an utter stranger to him.

And yeah, at first he'd been angry and pissed about how he was being handed off to _another_ person. This time someone who was barely in their twenties, and yet, due to the circumstances and the fact that she had been named in his Aunt's will- he knew that he had no choice.

It was either her or foster care. And frankly, she had seemed the lesser of the two evils there.

And the first time he'd met Ichigo was the night that his Aunt had been found dead in their home. Apparently she had been terminally ill for a while and had been hiding it from him to keep him from worrying.

Peter had been sitting in the waiting room crying when she had stormed into the waiting room, looked right at him as a Child Services worker had tried to explain things to him, and then walked over and told the woman none too nicely to _fuck off_.

The woman had sputtered and started to go off on her when Ichigo had practically slapped her in the face with a copy of his aunt's will, and her state ID. And then once she finished reading it and checking the ID, told her to fuck off, _again_.

The woman had balked for a moment and then left in a huff, leaving him alone with Ichigo.

Ichigo had sat down beside him while he had cried and hesitantly slipped her arm around his shoulders to pull him against her so that he could lean on her. Muttering almost inaudibly the whole time about how out of practice she was with 'comforting' someone who was grieving.

Which had earned her a choked laugh despite everything before he had gone back to crying. He cried for so long and so hard that he somehow managed to fall asleep in the position that Ichigo had tugged him into, and the entire time that he slept she had simply sat there in her chair and let him rest.

And once he finally woke up, she had a friend of hers come to the hospital to pick them both up. Even though she had driven her car the night before and would have to go and pick it up again later.

He'd been understandably anxious and scared about going home with her. After all, despite her comforting him the night before, he didn't _know_ her. And had been worried about a multitude of things.

Where he would live, how he would live, would he be okay? How would she take to him being Spiderman? He actually found out the question to that almost a month after she'd taken him home with her.

He had just come home from school when she had grabbed him and quickly ushered him up into the attic and told him to stay put for a little bit. Not long after that, he'd heard the unmistakable sounds of a door being kicked in and shouting followed by the sounds of fighting and gun shots.

And he had been absolutely horrified the moment that everything went silent again, because he was afraid that he would be alone again. However the moment that Ichigo pulled the ladder down from the attic and climbed up to give him the all clear- he'd known that something was sort of a little bit _off_ with his new guardian.

And for once, the semi healed gun shot wounds hadn't been the only indication to this fact. There had been other indications too. Like his spider sense tingling whenever he walked ahead of her down the hallway. He also tended to get weird vibes from her sometimes.

Almost as if he were being watched by a predator or something.

They were_ frightening_ vibes, though she never actually did anything to him. Or showed any malice, anger or hatred towards him. He had figured out quickly that she didn't need too.

About two weeks after the break-in, he'd been out past his night time curfew as Spiderman and she had suddenly walked up behind him while he was webbing some random mugger up to a brick wall, and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and had dragged him off literally kicking and screaming.

In his defense though...he hadn't actually realized that it was her until they had wound up in her living room and his mask had been ripped off and she then muttered, "Damn, that explains a lot." Which had been _nothing_ like what his Aunt May had done.

In fact as far as reactions went- that one had been a little bit disappointing. Her sending him to bed afterwards because it was a school night, swearing up and down to ground his scrawny butt if he failed to ace his history test, not so much. The next day, once he'd come home from school they'd had a long, long chat about him staying out after curfew.

Rule 1) Weirdly enough, was almost exactly like- Those who are in fight club; do not _speak_ about fight club.

He had had no idea if she was joking or not. But he got the general gist of things. She wanted him to keep the Spiderman thing a secret. And had even asked for all of the names of the people that knew.

He'd given up Ned and Tony so quickly that he was really, _really_ disappointed in himself afterwards. So much so that she gave him ice cream to drown his sorrows in. They were his friends after all and they deserved his remorse.

The second rule she had about the whole Spiderman thing, was that if he was going to be out past curfew- he had to not only inform her of how late he would be and what the hell he was doing- but he had to give her his exact location so that she could find him (because apparently it was normal for her to pretty much _hunt_ people down on a whim) and wait for her to join him.

She made it perfectly clear to him that under no circumstances was he to engage in any combat with people who were heavily armed and out numbered him.

She said that she'd take care of them for him. All he had to do was hang back and stay out of her way.

Again, he didn't know if she was joking or not. But by the time their chat ended he was leaning heavily towards _no_. She was not joking with him. She had meant it when she said that she would join him and take care of anyone that was heavily armed and outnumbered him.

He'd started to tell her that it wasn't a good idea.

After all as far as he had known at the time she was a human. Plain and simple. Not a super powered person like himself.

He had been terribly, terribly mistaken the first time that he had broken her second rule. Because true to the first time- she had actually hit the fucking streets and hunted him down in the middle of a firefight with a bunch of domestic terrorists.

She'd taken one look at him, crouched down beside a car, using it for cover and had then slipped around the guys shooting at him and taken them all out with an utterly _disturbing_ sense of ease that had left him stammering like an idiot while she had grabbed him and dragged him back home like the last time.

He was _still_ grounded for breaking her rule.

But on the upside of things, his grades at school no longer sucked.

"So...I was thinking," She finally said once she put her computer away and finally decided to rejoin the world of the living instead of stare at her work like a weirdo. He was about half way through his meal by then, so she got very little reaction out of him besides the flicker of his dark eyes from what was in front of him to her face. "It's a Saturday. It's nice out, and despite you being grounded at the moment I thought that we could go out and maybe get some flowers and go and visit May and your uncle."

His head snapped up so fast that it hurt his neck, his eyes were wide as he looked at her, his gaze was one part hopeful and one part anxious.

Her lips twitched for a moment and then she said, "And after that if you want to grab some lunch, or go to the mall, or maybe even call Ned to come over for a few hours and hang out- that would be fine too."

"R-Really?" He asked, his tone bordering on desperate.

"Really." She said with a nod.

"I- yes! I mean-" He started to babble and she merely smiled at him and then cut him off at the knees with a soft but firm,

"Finish your food- and make sure to actually chew it this time."

He grinned at her and quickly polished off the rest of his breakfast and then after putting the dishes in the sink, dashed from the room to get ready.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony had been depressed ever since finding out about May's death and Peter's disappearance.

He'd tried everything that he could think of to find out what had happened. His mind conjuring up all kinds of hellish visions of rapists, murderers, pedophiles, and robbers breaking into the Parker home and doing all kinds of horrible things to the two that would result in Mays death and Peter just disappearing into thin air like he was a goddamned ghost.

Finally, after digging really deep into local hospital records and Child Services, he found what he was looking for on the two.

May had died of cancer.

She'd been diagnosed about three years prior and had only become terminally ill in the last few months. Her death was sudden due to acute organ failure because of the cancer. Her death was quick, and in all likelihood she hadn't suffered much despite how hard she had fought the illness.

Police and Children Services, both reported that Peter had found her dead in their home after school.

He'd been taken to the hospital with May's body where he had been picked up by an appointed legal guardian. A young woman by the name of Ichigo Kurosaki.

Tony _hated_ her on the spot despite having never heard of or met the woman. As far as he was concerned she was an evil witch keeping him and his boy apart.

So it was no surprise that he hacked everything that he could think of as far as her information went just to figure out who the hell his kid had been left with all while simultaneously plotting her untimely demise.

Turns out, that there wasn't a whole lot on her. Which was all kinds of weird until he found something among her online files that sent up red flags with him.

It was an unopened file from Shield.

Curiously he opened the file and began to download everything to his AI's system to look over and study later.

Right now he was busy learning other things. Like where she worked- she was an artist- and literally made billions almost daily with her various works. She was pretty well rounded for an artist too since she did a little bit of everything.

And he did mean _everything_.

She cooked awesome five course meals, she painted, she could sew, she wrote novels and books (including poetry and children's books) she had even written several TV show scripts and a couple of movie scripts too. Really, really good ones at that.

The ones that were already out on video- he owned like all of them except two of them. _And dammit!_

He owned some of her bestselling books too.

She was good with kids and had helped to raise her two younger sisters from the time she was just a kid herself. She'd been a little bit of a delinquent as a kid and a teen. But that wasn't anything truly telling about her character in the here and now since everyone went those sort of phases when they were growing up.

She had graduated from high school early on with honors at the tender age of fifteen, and had taken some college courses. She lived in New York, several miles away from Queens in a good neighborhood. In a nice cabin style house with a decent sized yard with a pretty flower garden, was a godmother to one very cute little dark haired baby that belonged to her cousin and her friend from high school.

Another of her friends was a famous rock musician.

Double dammit! He owned some of the guy's fucking CD's too!

What was the world coming too when he was helping the enemy fund their- their _nefariousness_? Seriously he needed to get rid of that shit.

Finally after getting a good picture of the woman, and having Friday hack into her laptop, because the only cell phone she had was a motherfucking burner phone that couldn't be traced- he left his lab to go show the face of evil to everyone and get them on board with his 'remove' the threat and get Peter back plan.

"I found Peter!" Tony said the moment that he was in the common room. Luckily, ever since finding him at the Parker's residence about a week ago, everyone had been staying close by to keep an eye on him.

Everyone looked at him at the same time, each of them automatically dropping everything to hear what he had to say as Steve stood up and smiled at him. "That's great Tony. Where is he? W-We'll go and pick him up right now."

The others nodded their heads sagely in agreement. Each of them knowing that Tony had been going out of his mind with worry ever since they had picked him up a week ago.

Tony thinned him lips, hating the fact that what should have been a very happy and joyous occasion would soon be marred by…._her_. "We can't touch him yet." Tony said in an unhappy tone.

"Why? Is he okay? What's wrong?" This time it was Bruce that asked, his manner somewhat anxious.

Tony snatched the remote from Clint's hand and programed a picture of her to appear on the TV screen. "Because of that." He said with a dark glare at the image. If the actual woman had been standing in front of him, he would have set her head on fire with his glare. "That- That is the face of a_ villain_. She is keeping me from getting Peter." He spat angrily.

Everyone looked at the image of Ichigo Kurosaki in slight confusion. In all actuality it wasn't the picture or face of evil. If anything it was a very nice picture with a very pretty young woman.

Finally Clint asked, "And how is the very- like really, _really_ pretty lady keeping you from your kid?"

"Because she's his new guardian." Tony growled.

_"Oh."_ Everyone groaned knowing that they had a long next few days or more ahead of them since Tony would likely want surveillance on her at all times until they had a plan to get Peter away from her.

"Do you already have a camera on her?" Nat asked. Tony nodded and told the AI to pull up any video and audio from the last few weeks for them to go through, and they all hunkered down to learn what they could about the woman.

* * *

Days passed and so far- they could really see nothing at all wrong with the woman aside from an occasional sleep walking episode or two and maybe the fact that she slept on the couch, constantly.

In fact there was nothing wrong with her at all as far as they could tell.

She was softly spoken, attentive to Peter and his needs. She made sure that he always had breakfast before he ran off to school, and even made sure that he had money that was carefully hidden by being taped to his upper thigh under his pants so that no bullies could steal it.

There was even some video and audio of her teaching Peter how to throw a punch the right way, and when he accidentally punched her in the face they all tensed up expecting some sort of psychotic meltdown from her- but instead she just laughed while she bled and waved him off when he tried to help her.

She managed to take care of the injury herself and afterwards sat down next to Peter on the couch and wrapped an arm around him and just gave him a one armed hug. "It's fine Peter. It's not the first time I've been hit by someone." She said in an effort to reassure him that all was well.

Her words nagged at them.

But it wasn't until one video almost five days after, not long after Peter left for school, that they really understood why.

The video started during the morning after Peter had run out the door. The woman had been cleaning up her home when she got a weird call from someone. All they could really tell form her expression was that she was displeased about something, and barely an hour later some strange guy was in her home.

He backed her up in front of the camera attached to her laptop and the two of them struggled. He hit her several times and tried to put her in a choke hold. The two of them were rolling around and cursing and exchanging blows when all of a sudden they heard him say, "It would be unfortunate if anything happened to you're kid." The woman stilled after that and was kicked in the face and knocked back several feet where she fell and hit her head as the guy got up and started walking towards her, pulling a weapon as he did so.

They saw what he did to her, how he threated Peter if she didn't let him do it. And they were sickened by it.

By the time the guy finally left a few hours later- almost four hours before Peter was due home from school, she was still laying on the floor, bruised and bloody and half naked.

Several more incidents similar to that one happened over the next few weeks.

Each time it was either the same guy, or someone else. Each time Ichigo put up a fight until the kid was mentioned. Each time her attacker would degrade and humiliate and hurt her.

The only deviation from the routine was that one guy actually shot her in the shoulder and then jacked off on the bloody wound before rendering the woman unconscious and then leaving.

And each time it happened, she was careful to hide the injuries and clean up the mess and be sitting on the couch waiting for Peter when he came home.

She'd greet him with a smile, and ask how his day went and make him something simple to eat that wouldn't overtax her body or reveal her injuries to the boy and then would send him off to do his homework if he had it and then would take some pain meds and fall into a dreamless sleep on the couch.

However everything seemed to come to a head- attack wise- then next time she was attacked by someone. The only thing different about this time was she was miscarrying when it happened. She had started to miscarry almost an hour before the actual attack happened and when the guy had her pinned down- he laughed at her and said something about needing to breed her again.

Only he never got the chance. With an eerie sort of calm, she reached up and snapped the guys neck and then rolled him off of her and then shakily got to her feet and started to kick the shit out of the body screaming all kinds of obscenities.

_"Stupid fucking bastard! You piece of shit! Did you really think I was just going to lie there and take it forever! I will see you and you're low life cock sucking pals burn in hell! You will never touch me again! You will never threaten my boy again!"_ She emphasized everything with a vicious kick to the corpse's side before finally settling down and grabbing her phone and calling someone.

"Kenpachi, I'm calling in a favor..."

Noone said anything about her calling someone to mete out punishment since she had told them not to kill anyone, but to simply make an example out of them.

Because even though they may not have agreed with what she had done- they understood the reasons driving her actions. After the call was placed, she slowly sank to the floor and made another call, this time to someone named Uryu. Asking he/she if they would come and get her to take her to the hospital.

Once she was assured that they were on their way she then said a traditional Shinto prayer for the baby that she had lost and then spent the better part of fifteen minutes simply talking. She picked a name for it. Well, sort of. What she actually did was pick a male and female name for it. But settled on the name Mizuki because it could be used for both boys and girls.

She talked about how sorry that she was that the baby hadn't had a chance to really live before it died. She marked down the day's date on her phone as a reminder of the baby's 'birthday and death day' and said to herself in particular that she would get flowers and a cupcake to celebrate both next year on the anniversary.

Not long after that, her friend showed up with several other people in tow, all of whom ran into the woman's home and either gasped in horror at the scene before them or cried out and ran over to her.

"Oh Ichigo…" A young woman with shoulder length black hair and wide violet eyes said in a sad tone as she dropped to her knees next to the young woman and then reached out and pulled her into her arms and began to pet her hair as Ichigo finally broke down and cried until several young men finally pried the two apart and carried Ichigo somewhere off screen.

A little while later, she was back in the living room looking like she'd just got out of the shower. The body had been removed from her living room floor and any blood that had been there had been carefully cleaned and scrubbed away using some chemicals to scent the area so that she didn't have to _think_ or _smell_ the blood and breakdown.

Her friends were sitting or standing everywhere around the room, the dark haired young woman from before was holding her hand and trying her best to comfort her as Ichigo babbled off and on about Peter. And how she sort of wound up adopting him.

She talked about a couple of close calls with break ins and such.

With the unsettling manner in which she had snapped her previous attackers neck earlier, they all sort of got the feeling that something terrible had happened to whoever had broken in. And from her friends expressions- well, those that they could see anyways- they all seemed to know that Ichigo had done something.

And no matter what it was, they didn't care. In their eyes, anyone breaking into the young woman's home for any reason was _little_ better than the men that had been assaulting her.

Everyone was still there when Peter finally came home from school and one of her friends gently pulled him aside and told him about the miscarriage.

Peter had been understandably upset about what had happened to his new guardian. And had gone into full mother hen mode once her friend was done explaining things and started to fuss over her until she had simply reached out and pulled him down on the couch next to her and told him that she was fine.

They could tell by the way that she said it that she was anything but fine. But she was trying to push her own pain aside for his sake.

It wasn't healthy. But they had already come to _know_ and _understand_ that that in her mind, her suffering didn't matter as long as she was still able bodied enough to do what was right by Peter.

And she would continue to push her feelings and everything else aside to take care of him even if it inevitably broke her.


	4. Chapter 4

"I...think I may have jumped the gun on the whole- villain thing," Tony dazedly admitted several moments after the last video had been seen and then turned off. "I mean, I want to hate her. Really I do. But after seeing all of that- how she was attacked and stuff on multiple occasions... I- I just don't know what to say. I mean, h-how does someone even _function_ like that? Under those kinds of stressful circumstances? I just don't get it. How is it possible that she can- I mean for fuck sake she killed a man. Maybe more than one. Peter is a superhuman! He's Spiderman. Wouldn't his spider senses be tipping him off that something wasn't right about her?" Tony finally asked as he looked at the others when Bucky chimed in.

"She has training."

"Huh?"

"Did none of you really _not_ notice?" Bucky asked in an incredulous tone as everyone in the room gave him their undivided attention. "Really guys? I'm the former fucking Winter's Soldier, former brainwashed assassin of Hydra. And none of you even fucking noticed how she would freeze up if the kid was mentioned by any of her attackers?"

The room was utterly silent before Nat finally sighed and said. "You're right. I noticed that too. The way that she went from violent to frozen in the span of zero point two seconds was almost like-"

"Like me. When I was still the Asset." Bucky supplied helpfully. Nat thinned her lips in displeasure and wondered what the hell Parker had managed to get himself into this time.

"So...does that mean that she's one of Hydra's left over goons or-"

"No. I don't think that's it at all," Clint finally chimed in as he leaned forward in his seat. "I don't think that she's Hydra or anything. But there's definitely some sort of conditioning there. But it isn't the same as a total brainwashing. Not the same as Bucky's was. I also think that that's _why_ so many people showed up when she called for help. I think that they know that something is wrong and- for fuck's sake am I the only one who noticed that they weren't even freaked by the dead body when they saw it. I mean they simply removed it. Maybe even just took it somewhere and disposed of it."

"And then there's the fact that Peter is treated well by her. _Very well_. There's no signs of abuse, verbal or physical. No obvious signs of manipulation or distress from the kid. She treats him as if...as if he were sort of like a younger sibling or like her own son. She _really_, genuinely cares about him."

"And he cares for her too..." Tony said with a defeated slump of his shoulders. All hopes of ever somehow wresting Peter from the young woman's grasp were slowly slipping away from him. Leaving him feeling sad and depressed.

"He does." Bruce confirmed and it was all that Tony could do not to cry when Steve suddenly said,

"What if the reason that May named her his legal guardian has to do with the fact that maybe she knew something about the girl before hand."

Tony's head snapped up at this and he mulled the blonds words over for a moment before finally recalling the Shield file that he had downloaded days ago. "That...just might be right." He said slowly as he told Friday to pull up the Shield file and open it so that they could all see it.

A large 3D projection of the file appeared in front of them all and opened, and inside... Was a wealth of secrets that spilled forth.

Ichigo Kurosaki first came to the attention of Shield at the age to thirteen when she totally demolished several crime syndicate's and secret organizations. She showed exceptional talent in hand to hand combat, martial arts and extensive Special Forces level weapon's training. Military grade.

There were notes of various martial arts practices. Several military combat styles.

And a whole_ lot_ of other shit that made each and every one of them drop their jaws in utter shock. Even the usually unflappable Clint and Natasha's jaws damn near hit the fucking floor!

She had fought against criminals, mutants, super humans and...mad scientists similar in nature to those that Hydra had employed from the time that she had been fourteen. She had been in two comas. Injured multiple times. Damn near killed multiple times too.

And had dropped more bodies in her young life than Tony, Bruce, Bucky, Clint and Natasha combined.

But despite all of that- Shield had named her an ally and had given her several code names.

_The Reaper, Angel, The Storm, Guardian_ and the last one was the_ Sentinel. _And there had even been a note circled at the bottom of the file that really shocked the hell out of them. The kid had not only been considered for the Avenger's initiative.

But was also an unspoken and unnamed member of their group meant to serve as a failsafe to protect the world if the Avengers ever fell in battle.

None of them could manage to speak for a long time. And when one of them finally did- it was Clint. And the only words he could manage to say was a strained sounding, "Holy shit she's one of us!"

* * *

A little bit later on, once they were all able to pull themselves together they all sat around the dining room table trying to figure out what the plan was now since it was obvious that Peter and the girl were attached to each other. And she had been protecting and taking care of the boy at great cost to herself.

Which had elevated her in the eyes of Tony and the rest of them from _villain_ to motherfucking _saint_. Minus the un-saintly killings, that is.

"Okay so... I still want Peter. But it's looking more and more like he and Miss Kurosaki are going to be a package deal. And...her Shield file never mentioned anything about any special abilities. Just that she had military level training and such."

"Well, it isn't as if we don't have room for them both. The tower still has floors that are set up with apartments and such that are all unoccupied." Steve said.

"True." Tony said with a small frown. "But Miss Kurosaki's tendencies to drop bodies and become self destructive are a little bit of an issue. I don't want to bring her in here and have her flip out on us and injure anybody." Tony reasoned. He wasn't exactly wrong. Her tendencies _were_ a little bit concerning.

"Peter seems to have a calming influence on her. You could keep the two of them together until she adapts to her new surroundings." Bruce said. Nat and Clint both nodded their heads in agreement of the man's assessment.

They weren't wrong there.

The kid was a sort of a calming influence on the young woman. But that didn't mean that Tony had to _like_ putting Peter in a possibly dangerous situation where she could become violent or even volatile. Even if she didn't lash out at the boy, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't try to stop her from hurting anyone and become injured himself.

He was still mulling things over when Nat finally chimed in with a suggestion.

Why didn't they all meet her in person, and get a good feel for her personality before they made any decisions? It was the best damned idea that anyone had had so far.

And it was definitely worth a try. And with the idea firmly in mind, they all started to plan.

* * *

Peter had had fun hanging out with Ichigo today.

She'd gotten a nice bouquet of flowers for his Aunt May and Uncle Ben and a second one for his parents just in case he wanted to go by their graves as well. And once they had arrived at the grave yard, she had handed them both to him and told him to take his time visiting.

She wasn't in any rush to be anywhere important.

So while she meandered here and there around the graveyard, Peter had visited his aunt and uncle and talked to them about anything and everything. Including Ichigo's recent miscarriage and his worry for her safety.

He completely missed the odd way that Ichigo suddenly froze up and raised a hand to one of her shoulders when she felt a gentle squeeze there from her old friend May.

"Don't worry so much May. I'm taking care of our boy." She said in a low tone that she didn't want Peter to hear. He didn't know about her abilities just yet, though she knew that the pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling into place and he would someday soon realize that she wasn't entirely human anymore.

And to be honest...she wasn't really looking forward to that conversation though she knew that he would have a better understanding of things than most people who knew her. But in the meantime- she just wanted to enjoy the peace before the storm.

Was that so wrong?

Peter spent two hours just visiting with his aunt and uncle before moving on to his parents and telling them that he hadn't forgotten them and that he missed them too before finally getting up and dusting himself off and waving Ichigo over and telling her that he was done.

Ichigo felt May convey her feelings to her though a fuzzy sort of warmth and then bid her goodbye for the time being as she slowly made her way over to Peter and looped an arm around his shoulders and then walked out of the graveyard beside him.

Pausing only briefly to scan the cemetery for a moment and take note of all of the lost souls dwelling there in need of closure and help moving on. Making a note to come visit them later in the night once Peter was asleep, she then turned back to the teen and listened to him talk about some of the things that he'd talked to his aunt and uncle about with a small smile.

After leaving the cemetery she took him out to lunch at a nearby all you can eat buffet- which had been cool since he'd been starving by then. Ichigo must have been starving too, cause she had eaten twice as much as him before they had left.

After which she had taken him out for ice cream, and then to the mall to just wander around for a little bit while she looked at some craft stuff and bought a few books for her and manga's for him.

And then the two of them left the mall to grab some burgers, several orders of mozzarella sticks, and onion rings, a couple of milk shakes and such from a little place called The Trailer- a nice little ma and pa run restaurant- and then headed home where Peter planned to call Ned and see if he could come over and play video games or something.

They had just gotten home and were starting to sit down to tuck into their meals which was spread out across the table in front of them both when there was a knock at the door.

Which caused the two of them to pause with their mouths open and their food half way to their mouths and their eyes to flicker to the door. Peter's gaze then flickered to Ichigo for a moment as the woman put her food back down and muttered a few choice words of displeasure at being interrupted during their snack time and wandered over to the door and opened it.

And got a weird look on her face as he heard a familiar voice say, "Hello!" A split second before Ichigo slammed the door in Mr. Stark's face.


	5. Chapter 5

"D-Did you just slam the door in Tony Stark's face?" Peter asked in an aghast tone as his burger literally slipped out of his hands and fell onto the table with a messy splat.

Ichigo merely stared at him wide eyed for a moment and awkwardly said, "I did."

"W-Why would you-"

"I don't know. I panicked!"

"I've seen you_ literally_ beat the snot out of people with semi automatic weapons and one man knocking on your door freaks you out?!" Peter said in an incredulous tone.

"I-In my defense...he's _not_ the only person out there. He brought friends."

Peter made a choking sound and jumped up out of his seat. "The Avengers? _Oh my god!_ You slammed the door in the Avengers faces?!" Peter practically shouted at her in dismay.

"What? Like you've never had anything that you wanted to mark off of your bucket list!"

"Slamming a door in the Avenger's faces isn't something you put on a bucket list and- _Why the hell_-"

"Language young man!" Ichigo snapped at him automatically.

Peter blinked at her sharp tone and shrunk back a little bit because she had never used such a tone with him before. She was always so soft spoken and...nice. So he didn't know what to make of the weirdly abrupt change in her.

"Sorry." He mumbled as he looked down for a second. She huffed for a moment and then muttered.

"Don't apologize for freaking out kid. I get it, really I do. They're the Avengers. Earth's mightiest hero's. They're usually more well received than this. I-I'm just feeling a little bit distressed with having them show up unannounced here at the house. So here is what I'm going to do... I'm going to go get one of my meds and take it and you can let them in. No one touches my food though, got it."

Peter snorted in amusement at her and tried to resist the sudden urge to laugh as he said, "I'll protect you're food with my life."

"Good man," Ichigo said with a nod before motioning with her head and saying, "Come here and let them in." As she moved aside for him. Peter moved to do as she bid as she brushed past him to head towards the bathroom to grab her meds and paused only long enough to watch him for a moment as he opened the door to let a group of potential enemies into her home.

* * *

"So...did anybody else notice how fast she slammed the door?" Clint asked uncomfortably. Their plan to meet Miss Kurosaki was going about as expected so far. For a worse case scenario, that is.

In all honesty none of them had expected her to do what she had done. In fact they had somewhat expected her to do what most people do and fawn over them just like everyone else. However she'd barely taken one look at Tony's smiling face before she had promptly slammed the door closed in it.

Causing the man's smile to slide right off of his face and the others to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot as both Steve and Bucky tilted their heads to the side and got looks of extreme concentration on their faces indicating that their enhanced hearing was picking up something on the other side of the door.

Everyone stayed quiet for a few moments and let them listen to what was going on inside when Bucky finally muttered, "Fuck, we freaked her out."

"Yeah looks that way." Steve confirmed with a nod of his head.

Tony looked at the two through narrowed eyes and asked, "Seriously?" In an incredulous tone. As if he couldn't believe someone with her background could possibly have been freaked out to find them on her doorstep.

"She mentioned something about a bucket list." Steve said with a slight frown.

"And meds," Bucky said with a dark expression on his face. "She didn't say what they were for though. So maybe they're for anxiety?"

"That wouldn't be surprising given everything that she'd been through the past two months." Nat pointed out gently.

"Well hell, we've botched this visit before it could even begin haven't we?" Tony muttered with a slight droop of his shoulders.

"Not necessarily." Bruce said.

"She's going to let Peter let us in." Bucky said.

"And he's to guard her food with his life." Steve said in a bemused tone as Tony opened his mouth to say something at the same exact time the door opened and Peter peeked out at them. Tony turned and looked the kid over from his messy mop of dark curls all the way to his toes, noting that he'd put on some extra muscle, and weight since the last time he'd seen him.

He was a sight for sore eyes. So much so that Tony couldn't stop himself from grabbing the boy and hugging him tight for a few seconds before letting him greet everyone else.

"Hey guys."

_"Hey Peter."_ Everyone greeted in unison before Tony pulled him back into a hug as Ichigo rejoined them, rubbing the back of her neck.

"I thought you were going to invite them inside kid." She called out, startling Tony into letting the kid go and looking at her.

Up close like this, Tony could totally see that Ichigo's pictures and such online didn't do the young woman any justice. She was lovely in her pics online, but in person, she was absolutely_ stunning_. Especially with her exotic eerie looking turquoise colored eyes and her near waist length blue-black hair.

She was tall for a woman too. He'd estimate that she was around six foot, maybe six foot one. Which was damned near as tall as Bucky and Steve, though they still had a few inches on her.

She had a nice curvy figure too. Not too small, slender or petite, but not obscenely big either.

He heard Clint, Steve and Bucky all let out dreamy sounding sighs and mentally cursed the idiots for being such skirt chasers. He'd have to nip that in the bud before they took her and Peter. After all, he didn't want any _unpleasant_ incidents to occur.

Not when she was already probably still raw and aching from her previous encounters with the people who had hurt her.

"Right, sorry guys, come on in." Peter said awkwardly as Ichigo moved out of the line of vision and went somewhere towards the kitchen and returned a moment later as Peter moved back out of the doorway to let them in.

The house was much nicer than what little bit they had seen in the videos. Large, spacious, cozy.

The pale aqua walls had little stickers of cherry blossoms and trees scattered around little areas here and there around the room making it look nicer than average.

She had a couple of fake plants scattered about too. A couple of small cherry blossom trees was in one corner of the room with little blue and green feather butterflies attached to a couple of limbs. She had some silk orchids too. White and pastel pink and purple in color.

Some pretty paintings of nature were scattered here and there around the room as well.

The place was clean with the exception of some of Peter's dirty socks, his school backpack and some books piled up on one of the coffee tables by the couch.

All in all, the place was incredibly warm, and had such a charming feel to it, much like the woman herself- that Tony was almost envious.

"Wow, nice digs." Clint said in an impressed tone. Ichigo had just sat herself down on the couch and was in the process of curling up in her usual corner when he said it, and everyone watched as the woman froze up for a second before giving a tight lipped smile and thanking him for the compliment.

They were able to tell how uncomfortable she was to have them in her home by how forced her expression looked as Peter took a moment to introduce everyone to her. Pointing out who was who as he did so.

They all exchanged pleasantries as they were introduced to her. Well, except for Bucky who was actually audacious enough to move over to her and take her hand in his and kiss her knuckles, causing her to nearly take his arm off in her haste to pull herself free of his grasp.

He'd looked a little bit wounded by her little spaz out, but had apologized for startling her. Which was a good thing since the woman was more than half way out of the window behind her seat, staring at him wide eyed and anxious as Peter asked, "W-Were you going to climb out the window?"

"What? No."

"The window behind the chair is open and you're half hanging out of it." Nat pointed out in a bemused tone.

"Maybe I find the window sill comfortable." Ichigo defended, still not quite settled enough to completely move away from it just yet. Call her crazy but the second that the brunette had kissed her hand she got weird war flash backs of Vietnam or something.

It had made her fucking skin crawl badly enough where she had actually wanted to escape. She didn't get feelings like that often- and usually only got them from specific encounters of a really, really bad kind but when she did- her fight or flight instinct kicked into overtime.

It took several minutes longer than she really would have liked, and by the time she finally climbed completely back inside of the house and shut the window, she was starting to shake a little bit. Which she hoped no one noticed.

Unfortunately, she could tell by the way that a few of them caught her trying to hide her hands that, some of them did. They merely didn't point it out to the kid because they didn't want to embarrass her and worry Peter.

"H-Hey Peter, why don't you go make some tea or hot chocolate or something for our guests." Ichigo suggested after finally managing to collect herself enough to recall her manners.

"Okay!" The boy chirped happily as he bolted for the kitchen to do as she bid leaving her alone with the Avengers. All of whom were staring at her oddly before one of the blonds asked,

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." She said sullenly as she frowned and then tacked on. "Now, lets get down to it while the kid is busy. Why are you here?"

Someone snorted, one of the blonds? She couldn't tell if it was the tall one or the shorter one. But she knew that it was one of them.

"Well you certainly don't like to beat around the bush huh, precious?" Tony said as he studied her. "Alright, so the long and short of it is this- The kid and us, we're all friends. We've been worried about him, especially when we found out about May recently. So we thought we'd come and check you out in person. And maybe see what kind of person you are."

"How nice of you," Ichigo said in a mocking tone. Already hating the lot of them for daring to come into her home under false pretenses like this. She knew damned well that they already checked into her and knew very well what kind of person she was. They were merely here to feel her out. Test the waters and stick their damned noses where they _didn't_ belong. "But you know, curiosity can get you killed."

Her duality of her words were both screamed of _warning_ and_ threat_ despite the calmness of her tone.

It occurred to Tony then, just what kind of person Ichigo was. And he couldn't help the calculating look that crossed his face as he considered everything that he knew about her and her character so far before finally smiling and saying, "Yeah. We get that a lot."

"Then you should take it to heart before you're curiosity kills you and your friends," This time her words weren't a warning or a threat. Merely a nice piece of unsolicited advice from someone that they didn't know terribly well. "I don't know about the lot of you, but I for one am damned _tired_ of burying friends and family." She said after a heartbeat or so before standing up and excusing herself from the room to go check on Peter.

It was a good thing too since it gave them a few minutes alone to think before finally deciding on the next course of action and agreeing on it.

Once they were back at the tower, Tony would begin making the appropriate arrangements to have Ichigo's room, and a nice work room fixed up for her.

Of course the kitchen erupting into chaos barely a few seconds after she left the room, and her stove being a flipping fireball had absolutely nothing to do with the decision.

It only reinforced it when she got hurt putting the fire out with her_ hands_.


	6. Chapter 6

The preparations for Ichigo's new life in the tower with the rest of them took up about a week or so. A week in which Tony's sole focus was the her comfort and giving her a nice workspace to do her crafts and stuff in so that she could keep working.

He spent days designing, hiring a crew, and buying all kinds of things while he had Natasha go out with Clint and buy her a bunch of clothing, shoes, and all kinds of other female items.

A lot of which were designer dresses, suits, silk and satin blouses and shirts, jeans, shoes, purses, and even jewelry and accessories for those special occasions where she would be attending gala's and such with the rest of them.

And by the time it was 'go' day, he could honestly say that he was proud of the room and work space that he'd made for her. She would be living like a princess from now on and would have nothing but the best of everything.

Which was something that she was sure to absolutely love.

Taking one last look of his week long project, he made sure to scrutinize everything from the paint on the walls, to the furniture, to the carpet, and beyond. Everything was finally ready.

And the day had finally come to collect his boy and Miss Kurosaki both.

Once he was in the common room, he began to go over the plan with everyone. He and Nat would go and pick Peter up on his way to school. While Steve, Clint and Bucky went and collected Ichigo.

Now due to Ichigo being a bit more difficult and less predictable than Peter was, they had decided to drug her in order to move her. After which a moving van would go to the house where some of her personal effects- her family pictures, her lap top, some of her more intimate items, her meds and her other work items would all be collected and brought to the tower.

Finally, everything was going perfectly. And in a few short hours...both Ichigo and Peter would finally be home and then from there their new lives could begin.

Everyone was practically giddy with excitement as they each prepared for their individual jobs.

Since Peter wouldn't need to be drugged to be taken, no one really bothered to think of anything that could be used on him in the unlikely event that he did put up a fight.

Ichigo however, because they didn't know much about her aside from her combat training and her tendencies to kill people that pissed her off, was going to get a special cocktail of muscle relaxers, sedatives, and maybe a few mood stabilizers.

Each drug worked almost instantly, and would put her under within moments depending on where the needle was used.

Clint got several, in the unlikely event that she did fight and somehow managed to evade the others and didn't go down right away. Steve got one- for obvious reasons. And so did Bucky.

Again, for obvious reasons.

"Okay so you guys are all ready. Do you know how you're going to get her?" Tony asked curiously.

The three merely exchanged a look and Steve replied, "We're going to try and get her from behind. Sort of just walk up and stick her and then wait. The needles are small enough that they could double as bee stingers or something. So she probably wouldn't notice."

"Right. Well, remember how freaked out she got when Bucky kissed her hand- she might have a similar reaction to having someone come up behind her. So...watch yourselves and make sure that you bring her back_ unharmed_." Tony said.

The soldiers both gave him mock salutes and then walked off while Clint just flipped him off and quickly followed them out the door.

"Brucie-bear, do me a solid and have a medical team standing by just in case the three stooges get in over their heads and someone gets hurt."

"Got it," Bruce muttered with a nod of understanding. Knowing damned well that Clint, Steve and Barnes were likely to get themselves into some sort of mischief that would likely end with one or all three of them injured. "Good luck Tony."

The man gave him a tight lipped smile and then grabbed his sunglasses and walked out of the room with Nat quick at his heels.

* * *

Steve, Bucky and Clint sat in the SUV across the street from Miss Kurosaki's home waiting for the young woman to make an appearance so that they could grab her. Peter had been sent off earlier and to their knowledge she _should_ have been home.

However for some unknown reason, she wasn't.

"Do you think that maybe she went out to visit someone or something?" Steve wondered aloud.

"She does have a lot of friends." Bucky commented as he shifted ever so slightly in his seat.

"Or...maybe she simply had an errand to run." Clint suggested as they sat there and waited. They must have sat there for another hour or so before she finally showed up again. Only this time she was riding on a motorcycle, wearing a black leather jacket and some torn and blood stained jeans, and biker boots.

Pulling up to the house, she parked her bike close to the garage and put the stand down and then took several painstaking minutes to climb off of the bike, and when she did, the three could plainly see that she was having a bit of difficulty walking without limping.

One of her arms was pressed tightly against her chest and looked..._wrong_.

She was sweaty, exhausted, and obviously in pain. All of which concerned them. But at the same time it should also make their job much, much easier.

A crippled prey was easy pickings, after all.

They waited until she slowly made her way inside the house and slammed the door shut behind her before bothering to even get out of the car and make their way across the street.

* * *

Ichigo had had a fucking crazy morning.

After sending Peter off to school, she had decided to hit the cemetery to help some of the earthbound spirits there and had been attacked by five hollows. Five!

The damned things had sent every spirit in the graveyard running for cover and she'd wound up fighting them for almost forty five minutes. Managing to take out three before the other two could manage to lay a claw on her.

But when they had... _Holy shit_.

She'd been thrown through a _lot_ of things in her life.

Walls, telephone poles, trees, concrete, pavement ect… But she had never been thrown through tombstones and thick marble statues before. And Jesus Christ, they had _hurt_.

She wouldn't totally swear to it, but her ankle felt like it was broken, and so did her collarbone. She had some busted ribs, some really, _really_ painful bruising along her spine- and had still somehow manage to drag her ass up off of the ground and killed the remaining hollows.

But only after one of the took a fucking chunk of flesh and muscle out of her one of her shoulders.

Once she was in her bathroom, she slowly peeled her heavy leather jacket aside to check the bite wound and nearly threw up when she noticed that the damned hollow had left one of its frigging _teeth_ imbedded deep into the remaining muscle of her arm.

_Well, that's...going to leave a mark_. Ichigo thought idly.

And it would too. Hollow teeth were considerably different from human teeth.

They were long. Almost as long as a person's hand from the tip of the middle finger to the heel of the hand- and nearly as wide too. The sides were razor sharp, but the tips...those were _blunt_ just like human teeth were. So that when they tore through flesh- they really did some damage.

Reaching out with her good hand, she wrapped her fingers around it and took a deep breath knowing that this was going to hurt like a mother fucker, and started to pull it out when the bathroom door flew open and she froze as someone squeaked out, "I-Is that a dinosaur tooth?"

Her eyes flickered to the three men standing in her bathroom doorway gaping at her in with mirroring expressions of utter _horror_ as she quickly yanked the tooth out of her arm- a pained sound escaping her lips unbidden- and dropped it into the sink with a clatter before promptly leaning over the sink and vomiting.

"Holy shit!" One of the men said as he pushed his friends aside and quickly made his way over to her, wrapping his arms around her middle, eliciting a low pained moan from her before she puked again. "One of you dopes call Bruce and tell him to get the medical team ready!" The man holding her up shouted at the other two causing them to quickly scramble to do as he bid as she emptied her stomach for the third time and then slumped against him weakly. Unable to stand on her own power anymore.

Her head was spinning, her vision kept going in and out and she wasn't one hundred percent certain, but she may have been going into shock. She was shaking almost so badly that her teeth were chattering and she felt oddly cold and clammy and she couldn't seem to get enough air in her lungs.

_They hurt. _

She could vaguely hear the guy talking to her, trying to calm her down from what seemed like a great distance. The room spun and tilted and she heard someone screaming, _"She's going over!"_ As everything finally, mercifully went black.

* * *

Bucky held the little gal tightly yet carefully against his chest in an effort to warm her up a little bit using his own abnormal body heat as Steve appeared from down the hall with a fluffy blanket and quickly handed it to him.

And then began to grab rags and towels and tossed them onto the counter and made quick work of making some makeshift bandages for Ichigo's shoulder, a sling for her arm, and quickly wrapped her ribs and ankle before finally allowing Bucky to bundle her up in the blanket as Clint reappeared a few seconds later and told them to go ahead and take her to the tower.

He'd just informed Bruce of the situation and the man was waiting with a medical team to take care of her. The two nodded in understanding, their expressions grim but determined as they started out of the bathroom.

Bucky, with Ichigo's trembling body wrapped securely in the blanket. Being carried in his arms, and Steve right on his heels before he paused for a moment at the door and then turned and grabbed another rag and picked up the tooth and carefully wrapped it up and then slipped it into a leather pouch attached to his belt knowing that they would have questions about her injuries later.

And would need to study the tooth to get their answers and prevent something like this from happening again.

Bucky was waiting for him in the back seat of the SUV with Ichigo half lying against him, and half seated in his lap when Steve finally slide behind the wheel of the vehicle and started it.

Neither man bothered with seatbelts for obvious reasons. At the moment, their safety wasn't important. Besides they would have to be able to move quickly once they were back at the tower anyways and safety belts would only hinder their movements more than absolutely necessary.

Steve must have broke several speed laws, and it took they far longer than either man would have liked.

Especially when she started to vomit again, and then suddenly stopped breathing.


	7. Chapter 7

When Tony returned to the tower a little while later- he came home to utter chaos. _Literal, fucking chaos_.

He'd gotten a panicked text from Steve while he and Nat had been taking Peter out for an impromptu brunch at a nice seafood place nit far from the tower, stating that something had happened. Ichigo was in medical. She was injured and had stopped breathing.

And Tony had felt a chill slither down his spine as dread settled like a lead weight in his stomach.

He'd shown Nat the message and she had nodded her head in understanding as they had settled back and waited for Peter to finish up his food before then quickly paying the bill and walking out of the restaurant.

Once they were at the tower, Nat had taken Peter with her after talking him into playing a new video game or two and left Tony to head to the medical wing to see just what the hell had happened.

The soldiers had had _very_ specific instructions, and unless Ichigo had put up one hell of a fight- her current condition was totally _inexcusable _to him.

Fury lit within his veins, he walked the hallways to his destination wondering idly how he was going to make this up to Peter if anything else happened to the woman. Hell, he wondered just how he was going to make this up to Ichigo- if she managed to pull through.

Because somehow he didn't think a simple apology for what _should_ have been a very simple extraction gone bad- would mean a whole damned lot to her. Hell it might even cause them even more problems further down the road.

God knew that she already wasn't going to like having her life uprooted by them any.

It'd be a hundred times worse if the guys had actually hurt her because there would be_ no way_ that they could or would be able to make her feel safe with them. Not after his soldiers had injured her so badly.

Upon reaching the medical wing, one of the first things that Tony saw was Steve and Bucky. Bucky was sitting in one of the chairs in the hallway, his expression grim as his pale green eyes watched Steve anxiously pacing around just a few feet in front of him.

"What's taking them so long?" Steve wondered aloud.

"They're taking care of her Stevie. You need to calm down and sit down somewhere out of the way. You pacing around like that might hinder things a little bit if someone decides that they need to leave to go get more supplies."

"I know that, but I can't help it Buck. She stopped breathing!"

"For two minutes. She stopped breathing for two minutes. Likely because she was in shock when we got to her." Bucky said in a growling tone.

Steve paused his pacing to look at him for a moment before asking him, "W-What do you think did that to her?"

Bucky's expression turned chilling as he said, "I dunno man, but whatever it was- it better hope that I never get my fucking hands on it." He was planning to rip it apart with his bare hands if he ever did.

Tony cocked his head and considered what he'd just heard for a moment and calmed down a little bit since it seemed as if his soldiers hadn't actually injured Ichigo any. Which begged the question.

_Who or what, had?_

Finally collecting himself enough to manage speaking to them, he walked over to them and noticed the way that Steve stopped pacing and how Bucky stiffened a little bit in his seat as he stopped a few feet from the two and said, "Report. What the fuck happened?"

The two men exchanged uneasy glances before taking turns telling him what had happened.

Apparently Ichigo had been MIA when they had got to the house and had returned almost an hour later injured. Bucky was kind enough to catalog the more noticeable injuries. The shoulder, the broken collarbone, the hurt ribs, the ankle.

While Steve had dug the tooth out of his pouch and handed it over to Tony so that he could see it and have a little bit of a better understanding of just what had happened.

Tony took the tooth from him and carefully unwrapped it as Steve told him that the thing had been embedded in Ichigo's arm before she had pulled it out.

Staring down at it, Tony couldn't help but blink at the thing in stunned disbelief.

It was bigger than a human tooth. And had more animal like qualities despite the blunt tip too. Running a finger along the one of the sides to test the sharpness, he pulled his finger away bleeding and then frowned. Wondering where in the world Ichigo could have possibly been attacked by something with such teeth.

It wasn't like monsters went unnoticed in their city, after all. Anything so abnormal would have easily been spotted and reported all over the news.

Especially if said monster happened to be carnivorous enough to take a_ bite_ out of a human.

"Well..." Tony finally said after a heartbeat or so. "And you guys didn't see anything weird or...ya know, monstrous?"

Both men shook their heads causing him to huff a little bit knowing that he would have to run a few tests on the damned thing if they were going to get any answers and slipped the thing in his jacket pocket around the time that Bruce finally came out of the room where Ichigo was being treated and sighed once he saw Tony.

"How is she?" Bucky asked, concern bleeding into his tone.

"She's alive. But...her shoulder is going to require surgery. Her collarbone has been treated and so have her ribs and ankle. The medical team is currently removing her ruptured spleen and her appendix. The rest of her in just one big horrible bruise. She'll have to stay in bed for a while and let herself heal, and she might need some help to take care of herself for a little while. She's...not going to be able to do a whole lot on her own without being in complete agony." Bruce said in an slightly apologetic tone.

"But she's okay?" Tony asked.

"More or less."

"Alright." He said as Stave asked how long the surgery to remove the ruptured organs would take. Bruce told them that it's be a few hours depending on the state of the organs and how much of a mess they made.

So between two to three hours. Maybe more if complications arose. The three nodded mutely and then settled down and grabbed themselves a seat and hunkered down to wait while Bruce went back into the room to monitor Ichigo's condition so that he could report any changes.

Leaving the three alone to mull over what to do next.

* * *

Peter was having fun hanging out with Nat.

The two had been playing Call of Duty since they had gotten to the tower and Tony had left them to take care of something important. He had just finished killing off the last of the baddies on the fourth level of the game while Nat leaned back against the couch and relaxed a little bit since she had been killed earlier on in the game.

"I beat the level!" Peter cheered as he jumped around in place as she laughed and congratulated him as Clint walked through the door and took a moment to look around before spotting Nat and making a beeline for her.

"Hey Clint!" Peter chirped at him in greeting causing the blond to pause for a moment to give him a smile and a greeting back before turning back to Nat and leaning down to whisper something in her ear.

Nat's smile turned brittle and strained as she cast a quick, cautious glance at Peter before then slowly getting to her feet and softly excusing herself from the boy's company.

Peter looked worried for a moment, but Clint hastily assured him that everything was fine and pulled Nat out into the hallway with him. Neither one of them noticing the weird way that Peter's expression quickly sobered as he rubbed the back of his neck in an effort to get the fine hairs there to_ lay back down_.

It didn't work.

Nor did it really calm his spider senses any.

The stupid things had been going off since earlier today not long after he had arrived at the tower. So he knew that something was up. He simply didn't have any time to go and see if he could find out what it was.

He kept hoping that one of them might slip up and mention something close to him. But it was quickly looking more and more as if they weren't going to take the chance.

Pulling out his cell phone, he decided to make a quick call home to Ichigo to let her know where he was and that he was okay however the second that the phone started ringing and she didn't pick up- he felt his heart plummet in his chest and his spider senses practically started _screaming_ at him.

Something was wrong with Ichigo.

He felt a sliver of fear snake through him and his hands started to shake as he clutched his phone so tightly that he accidentally snapped it in half and watched through blurry eyes as the pieces fell to the floor at his feet as someone re entered the room and walked over to him.

It was Clint again. And Natasha was strangely MIA which nearly had Peter start to cry as he looked up at Clint and simply asked, "What's wrong with Ichigo?" Causing the man to look at him with a startled expression on his face.


	8. Chapter 8

Tony was just leaving the room that Ichigo had been placed in for observation for the next day or so to make sure that she didn't have any more ruptured organs, or get an infection or anything. When Clint opened the door and looked at him with his lips thinned in displeasure as Peter shoved his way past him, and practically ran over to the bed where his guardian lay sleeping and paused to look her over anxiously.

"Peter?" Tony said hesitantly, hoping that the kid would understand that they hadn't kept Ichigo's condition from him to be mean or anything. They had just wanted to make sure that she would make it before they said anything.

"Why? Why didn't you tell me that something was wrong with her?" Peter sobbed as he looked at Tony with his dark, pain filled eyes. Tony swallowed past the lump in his throat and tried to think of something that would make the kid see that they'd only done what they had thought best. Nothing more. And nothing less.

"We wanted to make sure that she... That she'd be okay first."

Peter sobbed again, this time louder. A keen of distress escaped him as he buried his face in his hands and tried desperately not to cry in front of them. But there was no use. He was already crying. His face was wet and tear strained and he couldn't think beyond how he could have become an orphan again.

Ichigo could have died and he would have been _alone_ again.

He never wanted to be alone again. He hated the way he got attached to people only to have them leave a gaping hole in his heart when they finally left him. He had been healing under Ichigo's care.

He knew it and she knew it.

She did nothing to hinder his need to visit his Aunt and Uncle's graves. Did nothing to stop him from celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. In fact she encouraged him to do so and even went out of her way to help him.

She'd taken care of him just as well as his late aunt and uncle ever had.

So the thought of losing her and losing the safety and security that she had given back to him since his aunt had died- made him practically _livid_ with rage.

Someone had hurt her. Had tried to _kill_ her and take her away from him. And Tony and the others had known. This angered him too, but at least he could semi understand their reasons.

"What happened?" He demanded in a low angry tone that made Tony flinch slightly at his tone. A thirteen year old kid sound never use a tone filled with such hatred and malice and wrath.

It was wrong. And Tony knew that they would have to keep a _very_ close eye on the kid to make sure that he didn't leave and try to hunt down whatever it was that had hurt his guardian. And considering what had happened to Ichigo, if Peter went after the...whatever it was, he'd likely wind up dead.

"We don't know everything kid. Just...what was seen by Bucky, Clint and Steve and what the doctors found."

"Tell me."

Tony was quiet for a moment as he weighed the pros and cons and then finally sighed knowing that the kid would find out one way or another- he started talking. Telling him how Ichigo had been found, how she had gone into shock, cataloging her injuries.

He didn't bother telling Peter that she had stopped breathing at one point. It would worry the kid needlessly and cause him to do something incredibly stupid.

Once he finished telling him everything, he waited for the kid to say something, but he didn't. He wouldn't even look at him. "Look kid, I know that you're...pissed at us for not saying anything to you. But we really just wanted to make sure that she would be okay. She's going to bed ridden for a few weeks after she leaves here. Steve and Bucky have volunteered themselves to help take care of the two of you until she's up and on her feet again. So...please, don't do anything until we have all of the facts."

"I make no promises." Peter said stubbornly as he grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the side of the bed and then settled himself in it to keep vigil over her. Tony sighed again knowing that he would stay there until Ichigo was at least showing signs of recovery before he actually did something stupid.

So with one last look at the boy, he then turned and left.

* * *

Peter didn't move from Ichigo's side for days.

Even after she had been moved from the recovery room and had been taken to 'her' room by one of the super soldier's the boy still didn't leave her side. He kept his little butt firmly planted in a chair next to her bed at all times.

He didn't leave her for any reason aside from bathroom breaks. He didn't bother getting up to eat, or join anyone else in the tower to watch TV or play video games.

No- if he needed anything at all, one of the men hanging around Ichigo's room got it for him.

Finally after almost five days of straight sleep, Ichigo began to stir a little bit and rolled over onto her side and tried to push herself up. But had to stop when she let out a pained sound and collapsed onto the bed and just lay there trying not to cry.

That was the only time that Peter left her. And it was only for a moment or so to get help from whoever was in the other room.

Bucky was in the middle of fixing everyone some lunch when the kid came tearing out of the bedroom calling for help. Frowning a little bit as he noticed how anxious the boy was, Bucky took a moment to wipe his hands on a towel and walked out of the kitchen to see what had the boy in such a tizzy.

"What's up Peter?"

"I-It's Ichigo! S-She tried to sit up and hurt herself."

"Alright." The man said slowly as he gently moved the kid out of his way and then walked towards the bedroom to see if the woman had damaged herself or not. If she did, he'd be taking her back down to medical to get checked out.

Entering the bedroom, he made quick work of moving over to the bed. Noting absently that the woman had somehow managed to turn herself over so that she was resting on her stomach, her pale face was illuminated by the two bedside lamps on either side of the bed, allowing him to see the agony that flitted across her pretty face as she cracked an eye open to glare at him for a moment before rasping, "W-Where am I?"

"You're at Avenger's tower," Bucky said smoothly deciding not to lie to her just yet. Especially since she was still in a bad way and couldn't put up much of a fight anyways. "You got hurt and we brought you here to be taken care of. Do you recall anything?"

"Yeah..." She said before falling silent again. Bucky got a weirdly interested look on his face and seated himself on the edge of the bed and waited patiently for her to elaborate as he reached out and pressed one of his hands to her face to check her temperature. Frowning a little bit when he felt how hot she was.

"So what happened?" Bucky prompted knowing that he and the others would be interested in learning what they could from the woman.

"F-Fucking Hollows..." Ichigo rasped as she tried to push herself up on the bed again only to be stopped by Bucky laying a hand gently on her uninjured shoulder and pressing her back down.

"Easy doll. You're in no condition to move right now. And probably won't be for the next few weeks. So just take it easy and tell me what happened."

"I- I can't..."

"Can't?" Bucky asked curiously.

"I have to get up... I have to get rid of the tooth. I'm the only one that can destroy it..."

"If that's all that's worrying you- we can put it into the furnace or something." Bucky suggested helpfully, hoping that it would keep her from trying to get up again.

Ichigo started crying as she stubbornly attempted to get up for a third time and was pushed back down again by him. "A furnace won't do anything... Only a Soul Reaper can destroy something like that. Please..." She gasped out as her body began to tremble from the strain of trying to get up while her body was so damaged. "As long as the tooth is in one piece the Hollow can regenerate. It'll attack and hurt people... Y-You're all in danger the longer it goes without being destroyed!"

Bucky mulled over what she was saying, not really wanting to dismiss what she was saying as just fever induced delusions, but at the same time he wasn't really sure what to think.

Just what the hell was a Hollow and why did she seem to know so much about them? And were they really in danger like she worried they were?

Turning his head, he looked towards Peter and noted the boy's thoughtful expression and was about to send him out of the bedroom to grab some pain and fever meds for her when the kid decided to ask, "Ichigo, what's a Hollow?"

"Monsters, Peter. Monsters that used to be human. They're terrible and nightmarish- and they devour humans like me..."

"Like you?" The kid asked with a curious look on his face.

Ichigo gave him a wry smile despite her pain and merely said, "Like me... _Soul Reapers_. W-We're considered delicacies to them. Once a Hollow has eaten one of us- they become addicted to the taste... And they hunt us without mercy. The damned things murdered my mom when I was seven. I grew up knowing that it was my fault... and blaming myself for it. And I've been fighting them ever since."

"B-But you couldn't have known what was going to happen!" Peter protested.

"Doesn't matter," Ichigo said tiredly. "My mom would never have died if the Hollow hadn't been able to lure me away from her side. She died by throwing herself between me and it when it was about to strike me down. I never saw what happened. I got knocked out somehow. And when I woke up, she was just gone..."

"But that doesn't-"

"Dammit Peter, we didn't have enough of her to bury in a fucking shoe box! All that was left of her literally fit in the palm of my hand! Do you know what it's like for someone to be completely awake and aware and have their body devoured by something? It's beyond _horrifying!_"

"My mother was still _alive_ and aware of everything when the Hollow ate her. It wasn't fast. Hollows don't believe in mercy by any means. They think that fear makes the blood taste sweeter. The more a person fears- the more they gorge themselves! You can't scream, you can't signal for help, you can't even fucking run- you're frozen where you stand or lay because of the sheer horror." She panted as more tears slid down her face before finally going on to say.

"You're spider senses can feel them, you know kid- I've tested you myself without you knowing. I had too. You have no idea how much I worry that you'll get hurt because you're close to me. Your Aunt May knew about me. So did you're Uncle Ben. Some of the stuff I do is more than a little bit hard to ignore and they tended to pay more attention than most people did. That kind of hyper awareness can get you into serious _trouble_ if you pick up on the wrong things. It's why I stayed so close to them when we first met."

Peter's eyes widened a little bit as Ichigo continued.

"I knew from the first moment that I met you. Before I even brought you home with me, that you had a similar hyperawareness to their own. Things like that are passed down through the blood. Usually from parent to child. But I knew even before I found out that you were Spiderman, that some part of you could sense Hollows. I just had to _see_ how sharp those senses were. All those times you got freaked out from walking ahead of me, from having me watch you a certain way- remember those feelings, Peter- they'll one day save your life."


	9. Chapter 9

A little while later, Bucky was standing in the doorway to the bedroom watching as Bruce checked Ichigo's injuries and then gave her something for both her pain and her fever. While Tony hovered close beside him trying to sort through the information that Ichigo had unwittingly given the soldier and the kid.

"Soul Reaper? Hollow? Monsters that eat people alive? She actually said those things?" Tony asked in an incredulous tone.

"She did." Bucky acknowledged grimly, his pale green eyes never leaving the still figure lying on the bed. Even after the medicine finally kicked in and she fell asleep again while Bruce slowly withdrew from the room to join the rest of them.

"I've never heard of Soul Reapers or Hollows before." Steve said with a thoughtful frown marring his face.

"I haven't either. But from the way she talked, it wasn't _just_ a fever inspired delusion or a really bad dream. And since we have actual evidence of- something... Isn't it best to err on the side of caution here." Bucky said.

"Yeah, I guess that your right," Tony said after a moment or so before then saying, "I guess that we should destroy the tooth then."

Bucky half shrugged his shoulders as he looked over at Tony and the others before saying. "I told her that we'd drop it into the furnace or something. But she said that it wouldn't work."

"Then what exactly would? Did she say?"

"She did," Peter finally chimed in from his spot in a chair next to Steve. Everyone turned their heads to look at the boy as he huffed and said, "She said that she was the only one that can destroy the tooth."

"Because she thinks that she's a Soul Reaper?"

"I guess." Peter said with a shrug. In truth he didn't know what to think of this whole situation. Ichigo had all but hinted at being something other than _human_. So he was trying to figure out if she was a superhuman? A mutant? Or something else entirely.

And he was understandably coming up with a whole lot of blanks right then. Probably because he didn't have enough information.

"Okay... So what do we do with the tooth in the meantime?" Bruce asked curiously.

"We could test a theory." Bucky said.

"A theory?"

The soldier nodded his head and made a humming sound before then saying, "We could test Ichigo with it and see if she's really what she claims to be."

"Oh. I never thought of that," Tony said before then turning to Bruce and saying, "Why didn't you suggest that Brucie-bear?"

"Because I'm thinking about dinner instead of paying attention." The man deadpanned, earning snort of amusement from Tony. Bucky rolled his eyes at the two while everyone else took a moment to snicker quietly amongst themselves at Tony and Bruce's obvious attempt at distracting them.

"Did you bring the tooth with you like I said?" Bucky asked curiously.

"I did," Tony replied and then turned his head and said, "Peter, would you dig it out of my jacket pocket and bring it here please?"

"Sure Tony." Peter said as he got up and walked across the room to the small table where Tony's jacket lay, and reached into one of the pockets to grab the tooth when all of a sudden a sense of foreboding slammed into him and his spider senses started going crazy.

Jerking his hands away from the jacket he put his hands over his ears in an effort to drown out...something. But his spider senses were going so crazy that the tingling slowly turned to white hot agony and he felt himself falling to his knees as a pained cry escaped him.

Everyone in the room turned to look at him, thinking that he must have cut himself on the tooth or something and grew concerned when they saw him on his knees with his hands over his ears and little red tracks running down his face from his nose and eyes.

"Peter?" Steve said in concern as he started to go to the boy and get him but froze in place when Peter let out an loud agonizing scream.

They didn't really know what happened next.

It was like time slowed to a crawl or something as they each started for the boy, hoping to grab him and see what was making him act like this. When all of a sudden Ichigo seemed to appear out of seemingly _nowhere_ and had Peter wrapped up protectively in her arms, and was holding the boy as he suddenly fell completely still and silent.

The boy leaned against her chest, panting as if he couldn't catch his breath as she ran her fingers through his dark curly hair in a soothing manner before shooting them all a dark glare. And then reached up to the jacket and placed her hand over the pocket with the tooth in it and then- a pale blue light began to emit from her hand and the jacket began to turn to ashes and disappear.

Once the jacket was completely gone, she held Peter for a moment or so longer and then quietly stood up with the boy carefully cradled in her good arm and then walked back towards the bedroom, ignoring them as she did so, and returned to her bed. Taking Peter with her.

The moment that she was back in bed with her body curled around Peters own, Tony looked around at his friends questioningly and then asked, "You guys saw that too, right?"

Everyone nodded mutely, not really knowing what to say. They were more than a little bit shocked by what had just happened.

Especially since the woman was so _badly_ injured and shouldn't have been able to move an inch no matter how hard she tried. And yet she had somehow managed to leave her bed and come to Peter's aid. Despite the fact that she very well could have popped more than a few of her stitches and injured herself even further- she had run to help Peter when they hadn't even known what the hell was going on.

And the fact that she had been able to disintegrate Tony's jacket- tooth and all. But she had also confirmed that she was a little something more than an ordinary human, and that her story about being a Soul Reaper, was in fact the truth.

* * *

The lot of them loitered around Ichigo's living room tossing ideas back and forth about how to handle the woman now that they knew that she was...more than an ordinary human. So far all they could come up with was somehow coming up with ways to test her to learn as much about her abilities as possible and maybe talk to Peter about anything that he might have noticed.

One thing that Tony was absolutely adamant about was maybe having Steve and Bucky stay with her or vice versa, at least for a month or so to figure out if she was a danger to them or not.

Nat mentioned something about seeing how adaptable and scocial she was as well.

Bruce- purely out of curiosity concerning her medical conditions- went through the bag of medicines that Clint had grabbed from her home and found a shit ton of anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, pain meds, anxiety meds, blood thinners, sedatives, heart meds, epilepsy meds and some other stuff that he would have to probably look up online.

"Jesus, is she the owner of a pharmaceutical company or something?" Clint asked in a dismayed tone as Bruce finally finished pulling all of the bottles out of the bag and laying them out.

"Dunno, but there's over twenty five different prescriptions here."

"How many of them do you think she takes as directed?"

Bruce took a moment to pick up each bottle again and test their weight before placing them back down again and announcing, "At least seven. The heart meds, the epilepsy stuff, a couple of the pain meds, the sedatives and the anxiety meds."

"How does she even function with all of this shit pumping through her veins?" Tony asked in a bewildered tone as he stared at the bottles.

He noticed that there was nothing in the bag that could work as birth control. And he knew that she likely didn't have an implant of some kind since she'd gotten pregnant and miscarried a while back. So unless something had been done around the time she'd miscarried and now- then she would probably need some just in case someone actually managed to charm her out of her pants.

He already knew that Barnes was interested in her. And Steve maybe was too.

Clint was married. But it didn't keep him from looking or flirting shamelessly with any pretty little thing he came across. Tony seriously didn't think that the woman would appreciate being toyed with in any copacity. Especially given the less than flattering way that she had reacted to Barnes trying to flirt with her the day that they had met her.

* * *

Rukia watched the chaos in Ichigo's yard with curious eyes up until a moment or so later when she realized what was actually happening and approached the crowd and yelled out, "All of you drop you're items and leave now before I call the police and report you all for stealing!"

Everyone in the yard paused for a moment before a woman turned from looking at Ichigo's paintings and merely said. "You'll do no such thing. This is a yard sale. No one is stealing anything."

"Then you're delusional as well as stupid," Renji growled as he stepped up beside his wife and glared at the lot of them while he held the 'for sale' sign that he'd pulled up out of the yard a few feet away over his shoulder. "Those items belong to out friend, Ichigo Kurosaki. And I don't see her here to _vouch_ for any of you."

"Well maybe your friend moved." Someone said in a snotty tone.

"Ichigo would never leave this house. It was given to her upon graduating high school. It's part of her late mother's legacy."

"Who cares!" Someone else called out as several familiar vehicles pulled up to the curb behind Rukia and Renji's and Uryu and Orihime, Chad, and a few other friends slowly climbed out of them.

Uryu walked over to the woman that had told Rukia that she wouldn't be calling anyone and promptly slapped the woman's hands sharply, causing her to drop the items that she had chosen to take home and sputter at him in outrage as he then turned to the rest and shouted.

_"Put everything down and get the fuck out of my cousin's yard, you parasites!"_

There was some mumbling and grumbling from everyone present. But most of them did as they were told and began to leave while those who tried to run with Ichigo's stuff were quickly dealt with by some of the others.

Once everyone was gone, Uryu pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to stave off a migraine as Rukia turned to the others and began to direct them to grab some of the stuff- they had a job to do.

Mainly putting Ichigo's home and things back to rights again before they began to delve into just _why_ Ichigo wasn't there when she had been expecting them.


	10. Chapter 10

Sometime the next morning around breakfast time Tony was on the phone with the real estate agent, who had called him in a royally pissed mood because she had been escorted out of the house after she had shown up to see just why the for sale sign was missing.

And had gone inside to see what was up and had found the house refurnished the way that it had been before as well as occupied by several very intimidating people. And had promptly gotten into an _argument/altercation_ with stern looking young man claiming to be Ichigo's worried older cousin- and had to be tossed out on her ass by the police a few minutes later.

Who had then _banned_ her from trying to illegally sell the house because Ichigo wasn't the only one with her name on the goddamned deed.

Meaning that her family and friends likely knew that something had happened to her and would be filing a missing person's report with the police and might even go on TV and offer a nice reward for her safe return. Both of which were bad for Tony and the gang since it could get them into trouble for kidnapping and such.

Tony made an angry tsking sound and glanced towards the others out of the corner of his eye. Everyone was eerily silent as he talked to the woman and told her not to worry about it. He'd take care of things personally before hanging up.

"What's wrong?" Nat asked.

"The woman pulled a fucking fast one on me-"

"Huh?"

"_Ichigo_. She pulled a fast one on me." Tony said in frustration before going on to say, "I put the house up for sale and had Clint organize a yard sale to take place after he left. Everything that he didn't have the mover's pick up yesterday- was dragged out onto the yard for anyone to grab."

"Yeah so?"

"So the damned woman has family that lives around here. A cousin who's name is also on the deed to her house. He had the real estate agent selling the place escorted out and banned from the property. The house has been taken off the market too which means that if she ever escapes from here- she has somewhere to go back to."

"That...isn't good."

Tony snorted, "No kidding. On top of that it's very likely that her cousin and friends will file a police report and maybe even go on TV and offer a reward for her return."

"Shit. That's...really not good."

"No it isn't," Steve agreed grimly before then asking, "It might get Shield breathing down our necks again."

"So what do we do? I can't imagine that Ichigo would be too thrilled with us for killing her cousin and some of her friends in an effort to get them to back off." Clint said in an irked tone.

"No, if anything that will simply maker her more determined to leave and take Peter with her once she's up and able to even try." Bruce sighed.

"We could have an accident happen to the house." Bucky suggested. Everyone looked at him like he'd grown another head or something as he shrugged and said in a defensive tone, "What?_ Fire's pretty_. Plus it isn't like anyone would notice that it was arson if we're really careful. And I bet that the house is insured, so...that's more money in the bank for her."

"And if she's upset- what do we do then. Say 'Sorry about the house. But don't worry any, you won't need one in the immediate future anyways?' Cause I don't really think that will go over too well." Nat pointed out.

"Meh." Was all that Bucky said next. As if he thought that everyone would come around to his way of thinking.

"Steve, talk sense to you're boy." Tony said.

Steve looked down at Bucky and smiled as he put his hand on his shoulder and said, "Hello, my boy-" Bucky smiled back at him in an amused manner and tried not to laugh. Really he did. But then Steve said, "Sense." Next and Bucky just nodded his head and then cracked up.

Tony threw his hands up in the air in a disgusted manner and said, "I give. There is no talking sense to those two! Nat quick, hit them both!"

Nat looked at the two men and they both stiffened, their laughter and smiles, quickly dying as they cowed a little bit under the weight of her stare as she said. _"Sense, boys_."

"Yes, ma'am." The two mummbled and toed at the carpet looking like two little boys that had just gotten chastised by their mother. It would have been funny under normal circumstances. But right now- it was just pitifully weird.

Tony opened his mouth to say something else to the two soldiers, but decided against it when Peter came shuffling out of the bedroom, tiredly.

"Peter! Are you okay kid?" Tony practically got up in the boy's personal space and began to look him over as thoroughly as he could.

They hadn't been able to pry the boy from his guardian's side the night before so that someone could take him to medical to get checked out, once they had finally returned to their senses. And they had tried. However not even once they had been absolutely sure that she was finally actually one hundred and ten percent asleep, had she ever let Peter go.

The woman had somehow managed to keep a death grip on the boy all flipping night. Even Steve hadn't been able to pry the kid loose from her. And he had tried until he had got red in the face and then asked for a crowbar.

The boy blinked at him sleepily, and then frowned and asked them all what was wrong. He didn't know why Tony was acting so concerned. Bruce asked him if he recalled anything from the day before and the boy slowly shook his head no and then told them that everything was kind of muddled, and difficult to recall.

Which concerned the lot of them a little bit. But since Peter more or less seemed okay, they'd let the kid eat something before he was dragged off to get checked out.

Tony moved aside and let the boy shuffle over to an empty seat at the dinning room table over by the window leading out onto Ichigo's terrace, and sat himself down when Nat asked, "How is Ichigo doing this morning?"

Peter frowning for a second as if he couldn't think straight and the question required a lot of thought before finally saying, "She's...really, really hot. I think she's sick or something. Her clothing was practically soaked a few minutes ago and I had to help her change her clothes before she laid back down."

"That's not good." Bruce said as he made like he was going to get up and go check on her, when Bucky stopped him by standing up first and making an automatic beeline for the bedroom to see if she was okay.

Bruce and the others watched him go in silence for a moment before someone slowly said, "Okay... Is it just me or was he pretty damned fast about getting up to leave and go in the bedroom?"

"It's not you. We noticed it too." Steve said as he blinked.

"Does Bucky like Ichigo?" Peter asked all of a sudden. His tone laced with a wealth of innocence and curiosity.

"Uhhh-"

"Yeah Steve, does Bucky _like_ Ichigo?" Tony asked in a slightly teasing manner.

Steve's reply once he made it was barely audible to them unless they really strained to hear him, but it sounded strangely like he said that Bucky had called dibs on the woman.

* * *

Once in the bedroom, Bucky moved over to the bed upon noticing that the covers had been kicked off of the bed and Ichigo was lying there panting.

Peter hadn't been lying when he'd said that she was practically soaked with sweat. Bucky could tell from where he was standing that the woman's hair was almost soaked through and her skin had a fine wet sheen to it in the soft glow of the lamplight.

Moving to sit on the edge of the mattress, He tried his best not to disturb her given how tired she must be feeling while trying to heal from her injuries and fight off a high fever too.

Reaching out absently, he pressed the back of his hand against her cheek and watched the way that she twitched curiously before she slowly cracked an eye open and muttered, "Wha?"

"Just checking on you. You're fever seems to have spiked some." Bucky said easily as he slowly removed his hand from her skin and tried to think of what he could do to help make her more comfortable when she croaked.

"Peter?"

"He's fine, doll. Just getting himself some food. Do you need anything? Medicine? Water? The blanket maybe?"

"All of the above would work. I'm too damned sore and tired to bother trying to get them myself."

"Right. I'll get them for you then."

"Thanks." Ichigo said with a tired sigh as her eyes drifted closed again as he got up and collected the covers to the bed and took a moment to cover her up again before then disappearing into the other room and coming back a moment later with some medicine and a glass of water.

Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, he reached over and slid a hand underneath her nape and carefully lifted her up a little bit so that she could take the pills and drink some of the water.

She took the pills easily, but drank all of the water down in almost one gulp before settling back down to rest a little bit more. Which was fine really, Bucky understood how thirsty a fever could make a person. Which was why once she was lying back down and he finished tucking the covers up around her shoulders, he went to get her some more for the next time she woke up and then reluctantly left the room so that she could sleep.


End file.
